which one, give some reasons why and which do you prefer, and why you prefer one over the other.

PC Mostly necause of the features, however standalones are much more stable.

I honestly like to use the PC based a little more than the other's they are better managed, and they sell better because they are cheaper, and more manageble.

The only advantages a PC based has over a stand alone embedded system is:

1-Lower Price
2-Higher Frames Per Second


In the new stand alone DVRs, they have all the featiures of the PC based, though like i Said, they cost much more. But for a business, quick and easy installation, no maintenance, and stabiliy, is priority over lower pricing, so I stick to the stand alones. I can build PCs and actually do, and service them, but Id never quote a DVR for one, as I dont want the stress :-)) But much respect to those guys who do and do it well, its a hard job!

Me, im tired of hard time comsuming jobs, so ill stick to the ready built ones with no maintenance.. :-))

However im willing to sell 1 PC based DVR in my new CCTV store, so ill be looking around in the next month or so. Will keep it geared towards home users.

Either way they are both expensive time as they land here in the Bahamas after high customs import tax and shipping costs. Yep, we are tax free, but thats because we pay tax on anything that comes in the country already! For example, we pay 50% duty on cars & 65% on eletronics, of the orginal US price. Cameras are actually only 15% duty, but they change it all the time and make up their own price at time of shipping.

Man you need to move to Aussie land... less taxes.
I would not say that all standalones are more expensive, I can buy a complete standalone DVR for the price of a Geo card.
Just takes a long time to find a good supplier.

All are more expensive here in the US side of the world. The stand alone DVRs here are primarily designed for industrial applications while the PCcards are geared towards budgets and home users.

The other is the case here... Standalones here are dirt cheap and PCI cards are considered expensive.